The Information Revolution

I believe that we are in the middle of an amazing shift in our knowledge semiosis. After about 6000 years of writing and 400 years of print, we are in the digital age with world wide access to an abundance of information, available on a world wide platform, delivered in a mixture of media. Michael Wesch has put another of his brilliant short videos up on YouTube, this one demonstrating the impact of the information revolution we are currently careering through.

Link found through Donna Papacosta, blogger, podcaster, and all round amazing!

A Quick History of our New Digital Environment

This is about our communication tools and how they are changing. It's short and fast. You might want to watch it more than once, if you're not a digital native. I needed to watch it more than once;->

A New Web Research Tool - Yoono

Text and image notes below video
I'm editing the shared post from my Yoono account because, although Yoono looks very handy for saving material found on the web, (text, images and video), it isn't completely my fantasy.

• You only get to see one section of my notes on my "buzz" on the Yoono demo page; I couldn't select the whole "buzz", just one individual "note" on the "buzz" to share.
• I couldn't drag the "notes" into the order I wanted; they appeared in the order they were "buzzed".

Of course, I'm a completely new user so I may just have missed some of the information provided in the video and the text/image explanations.

In any case, it looks to be like a cross between del.icio.us and digg. I suspect it will be more popular among the digital natives than del.icio.us because of its ease of connection with MySpace and because it feels more like the social web aspects they are familiar with.

I suggest you take a look at it, and spend some time playing with it. (In my opinion, you can't judge just from the demo; you need to play/learn, which is what I'm engaged in this morning.)

RSS in Plain English

If you have heard the term "aggregation" or "RSS" or even "newsreader" and aren't sure what they mean of how to use them, this video is for you.

RSS in Plain English

It's short and clear. Watch and then set up your account.

Link thanks to Donna Papacosta

Clipmarks Again

The first time I tried to clip the demo, I just got the image; see below.

This time I got to the demo on YouTube and was able to clip it there.

If I was successful, you will see it here, however, I will have to edit this post to add the tags.

clipped from www.youtube.com

Learning on the Web

I find the web a wonderful place for learning. While learning on the web, I have discovered that I like to see and hear how to do things using the web, not just read about it. When I find a new application that I might be able to use, I look for the Tour or for a video and/or screencast. I start from seeing and hearing; I read howtos, tips and Help later, when I get stuck.

As a result, when I read, in my Bloglines, about Scoble's post about Ning having a new drag and drop set up for creating personal social networks, like Elgg, (my choice) MySpace or Facebook, I immediately watched the 12 minute video on Ning's new and easy functionality.



Now I have my own social network and travel site! And it took me about half an hour! http://whatwesaw.ning.com/

How do you best learn using the web?